📰 Did you know Toronto has increased taxes on homes — also known as development charges — by 993 per cent since 2010? They now add nearly $150,000 to the price of a home, up from $12,000 a decade and a half ago. Storeys contemplates whether levying them makes sense amid a housing crisis.
🚴 Bike lanes may be a thing of the past. The Doug Ford government is considering legislation that would require the province to sign off on new bike lanes that take away lanes from cars.
🕵️♂️ Commemorative plaques — 18, in fact — have gone missing. The city doesn’t want to say it’s theft. City councillor Josh Matlow does. Why’s it happening? Who knows. Interestingly, metal thefts have gone way up in the past five years.
🏛️ The Don Valley West city council byelection just got a whole lot more interesting. That is, of course, assuming city council byelections can even be interesting in the first place. Three left-of-centre candidates are vying for the seat against one well-known conservative. John Tory and Kathleen Wynne tried to get the three lefties to rally around one candidate to avoid vote splitting. It didn’t happen.
🏢 The Landlord Tenant Board recently ordered Barney River Investments to fix its apartment buildings after residents engaged in a 10-month rent strike. It’s part of a growing wave of Toronto apartment dwellers using the tactic to score some victories.
🌳 The new Leslie Lookout Park in Toronto’s Port Lands is a welcome addition to an area desperate for redeeming qualities — especially once the neighbourhood’s revitalization finishes and thousands of people move in, Alex Bozikovic writes for the Globe and Mail.
🍽️ Forget the Michelin guide, the Toronto Star presented its annual must-try restaurant list. Neither Michelin nor the Star included California Sandwiches (the original one on Claremont, not the others), so take all their other suggestions with a grain of salt.
🗓️ Sometime in the next two weeks, Canadians will know how two Toronto men who allegedly planned to carry out terrorist attacks in New York on the anniversary of Hamas’s attack on Israel were allowed in the country.
🎉 Just under 1.5 million people (including me) went to the Ex this year, which beat the pre-pandemic mark by a few thousand.
Commuter corner
The Gardiner will close tonight at 11 p.m. and reopen Sunday at 10 a.m.
On the weekend, subways won’t stop at Pape Station for Ontario Line construction.
No service between St. Clair and York Mills stations on Saturday. Shuttle buses to the rescue.
On Sunday, subway service between Broadview and St. George stations will open at 11 a.m. Shuttle buses will run from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Events, dear boy, events
The Toronto Reference Library is having a massive sale through Saturday. Books for as low as $2. Admission is $3.
The 10-week Toronto Biennial of Art festival opens this weekend with events all over the city.
The Danforth East Arts Fest is this weekend in East Lynn Park. It runs both days from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Gallery Weekend will see several art galleries open their doors through Sept. 25. Most are clustered in the Junction, down through Wallace Emerson and Little Portugal, and into Queen West.
The Geary Art Crawl runs on Saturday and Sunday on Geary from Ossington and Dufferin.
The Queen West Art Crawl takes over Trinity Bellwoods on Saturday and Sunday.
Once you’ve gotten your fill of art, the VegTO vegan festival runs in Nathan Phillips Square on Saturday and Sunday.
For the meat eaters out there, Etobicoke Ribfest is back this weekend in Colonel Samuel Smith Park.
Celebrate the beginning of autumn or commiserate the end of summer on Sunday at the Spadina Museum’s fall festival from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Aidan Chamandy, TorontoToday reporter